Religion and capitalism

If Christianity is the system that moved human concern from what is more natural to it and instead refocused concern on imagined goods and evils, "divine rewards and punishments" which secondarily manifest as the immediate rewards of conformity to Christian social norms or the punishments of violating those norms, then indeed capitalism is truly a thing of Christianity. The mechanism seems to have moved into a tertiary stage now, where people act by reward or punishment expectations based on capital's hypnotic power over them:

1- "God", through the priests, commands conformity to moral laws

2- Christian society (family, and social institutions, and churches) commands conformity to social-emotional laws

3- Capitalist society (jobs, consumerism) commands conformity to the rewards and punishments expectational framework regarding desire for money and material goods, avoiding poverty, avoiding anxiety about the future.


So really this three-stage mechanism is related to how people hope and fear, it latches onto that basic psycho-philosophical formula and gives premade contents to it in order to define its operations; first those contents were hope and fear of divine wrath and the afterlife, then they were hope and fear of family and social acceptance, and finally nowadays it is hope and fear of financial and job-related success.

Three stages, same mechanism. Who the fuck cares about financial and job success, really? I mean to what extent does such concern really become justified or come from a true problem being well addressed? It isn't typically like that, the hope and fear is more like a psychotic half-conscious anxiety and the obsessive repetition of behavior and thought-patterns that are always reinstating but also keeping at a distance those very anxieties and habits. If our goal were truly to be "financially stable" and have material needs met sufficiently, we would live our lives far differently than we do and modern capitalism would be impossible.

Pretty valid thoughts, I think. I have never given this serious thought although I have been tempted a couple times.But there was no reason as I had already given up on Christianity.

Yes, this is really accurate. Its immediately clear why capitalism does not work in non Christian nations except as total fascism, which isnt capitalism at all. A tertiary stage is however not fully in focus Id say -->> Capitalism needs to be upgraded, more minerals infused in its metabolism, newer, denser, purer atoms, make it greater, and then we will see what we can consume - how we can become lifeforms beyond the scope of need and restraint and into philosophy of excess - capitalism could (be) lead to an apotheosis of valuing, which then could slide off into a stable ever selfderiving prosperity, as nature is prone to harvest its failures as success.

Speaking of, but what about pitting Ayn Rand in a kind of demiurgic duality against Consumerism? Two aspects of capitalism, of conformity, of moral-emotive machinery, that work with each other by trying to gain from each other. Two forms of egotism, commanding and subservient - together allowing for a creative process on which a third group thrives - those who inherit the Earth. Neither the meek nor the evil can walk through the eye of the needle - only the wise have learned to balance-as-such.

Balance as such is able to balance two fallacies and project a truth. In the same way the election process works, and could not be sabotaged by means of a walking dead perhaps because of the requirement that both sides are fallacious - and gladly so.

I guess an American President has to have the capacity to enjoy him or herself. The loser of this cycles when she smiled was always clearly the most forced thing of the evening for she-it. Usually because she-it had to smile over an ugly truth, but also due to a lack of daemonism.

Are you trying to tempt me toward learning more about Ayn Rand's philosophy?

The only problem I have with America's capitalism is the those who have more than enough are not putting enough back into society, the people from whom they got all their assets.

Rebuild America's infrastructure. Make it a manufacturing nation again.

Capitalism is simple to understand, it is the emergent result of a small number of core principles: 1) the legal right to personal property, 2) the legal right to freedom of expression including the philosophical awareness of the primacy of the principle of individual self-determination, 3) the philosophical awareness that taxation must be kept to a minimum necessary level, 4) the philosophical awareness and legal system of allowing anyone to start a business and own the success or failure of that business, 5) the philosophical principle of localism (local governance). Given these, I think capitalism is simply a natural emergence effect. "Capital" stands in for a person's life-value in the social-economic sense, what value they are able to earn to themselves and how they discharge that value transactionally into the rest of society.

You can't have state capitalism such as China tries to do, that isn't capitalism at all. Simply moving around large sums of money at the whim of state planners is the opposite of what capitalism is all about, and which is why Chinese markets for example are a total joke. As soon as markets start to fall the government steps in and freezes trading or forced investors to buy or sell according to what Chinese officials think is the best action at the time-- lol. How utterly pathetic.

Capitalism is a sign of freedom, and where there is freedom there is life. Most of the problems in the US now are due to abandoning the core principles I outlined above, in favor of a more Chinese approach. Education, healthcare, energy production, all of that is highly subsidized and government-meddled now. The interesting tension-opposition is that capitalism needs strong but very minimal regulations to protect against such things as fraud and monopoly force, and the government must instantiate those legal regulations and enforce them, but that is about all it should be doing-- the philosophical daemonic of government qua capitalist society is that it must regulate only so as to prevent itself from interfering with the very system which it must regulate. Only a society with a very strong history of rationality and psychological strength-depth could manage the required subjectivity for that, which is perhaps why Christian societies are needed for capitalism to work (because Christianity despite its problems is nonetheless representing the as-yet highest stage in the development of human subjectivity).

I think thats exactly Ayn Rands position. Everything after FDR is Chinese compared to this. The Marshall Plan in Europe, which financially created the EU, is pure statism, anticapitalism.

I argue that Consumerism is incompatible with Capitalism-proper. The Buyer needs to have a much more value-integral standard for making his decisions of purchase. Consumerism reduces markets to goo.

Japans markets are badass

I'm well versed in Rand, she is ok in some ways but I do not consider her to be much of a philosopher. Her experiences with the USSR clearly showed her the merits of capitalism and she obviously loved America, but the problem with her and "the virtue of selfishness" is that you end up using other people openly and narcissistically for your own gain, you value others only based on their use-value to yourself, which circles around into an empty utilitarianism. She accurately describes a valid and important aspect of human being, such as personified in her character of Roark, but she inaccurately hypostasizes that aspect to the entirety of human being as if there were nothing else there except for "virtuous selfishness" and a disinterest in other people save for the utility value they are able to give us.

When we feel compassion for example we are not "loving the weakness" of the other person, we are loving the person themselves and in spite of, in distinction to, the weakness. This is very important to understand. Compassion separates the given aspect in question from the person themselves, which is a properly philosophical move, and one that Randian systems cannot achieve. Randian systems end up contracting  view of humanity to the most narrow view possible to produce the largest possible field of rational consistency, so basically what Rand is doing is refusing to philosophize for the sake of a kind of psychologically-fortified defensive system that prescribes a circle of possible meanings and values and dismisses anything outside of that circle.

I disagree. Compassion to me means knowing a persons strength, and addressing him or her through that. That is what Rand proposes as a basic human ethics. I see her as deeply compassionate, protective against the sicknesses of Academia. Ive read most of her essays, I can't find much to object to, except that she, much like anyone before me, didn't know how to logically frame Value. Which she knew is the main task.

Loving people for their weaknesses is in fact very common - it derives from the absence of power, resentment. It is the same as pity, which Nietzsche detested more than anything. It is the joy in seeing weakness, so as for oneself to feel strong - and this is the common pathos known as "Compassion" in the west. There aren't many exceptions, except in strongly traditional religious communities, which, to be frank, I see more and more as the only valid parts of humanity save for philosophical individuals.

Speaking for myself and one other person I know, that isn't at all how I experience compassion. I do experience it a lot, and it isn't weakness-focused, rather compassion appears when someone else's strengths are juxtaposed against a present malady or suffering they are going through. It would be impossible le for me to see a wretched person and feel any compassion for them, but I can look at a noble person who is in pain or going through some kind of weakness or difficulty and feel immense compassion, not because of the one weakness or suffering that currently afflicts them but simply because that suffering or weakness is a backdrop against which the person's other, more significant and real aspects appear in contrast.

Only the most wretched people have no redeeming qualities-- most people are a combination of noble and ignoble aspects. When an ignoble aspect is observed this causes juxtaposition with the nobler aspects, as well as the suffering caused by the distinction there is also a symbol or sign of the difference and contrast. When we feel compassion it is because we are recognizing the noble and honoring it in spite of the ignoble which may also be present. And as I said it would be impossible to feel compassion for someone who had no nobility and no redeeming qualities at all.

In fact I would go so far as to say that compassion is, for me anyway, a form of joy. One feels compassion only for what one already loves, for reasons entirely separate from that suffering or weakness which had momentarily contrasted their nobler qualities and as a consequence brought forth compassion as an emotion. Compassion is the recognition of value, of love, and really has nothing to do with the immediate weakness/suffering. That immediacy is just a stimulus that spurs value to activate itself in an attempted defense of the other, of the loved one, by quite literally trying to wrap one's own joy around the other and draw them into our own valuing-sphere. And again this is done not for the sake of some weakness, suffering or ignobility but precisely the opposite, it is done for the sake of fighting back against those things and for the sake of protecting and respecting the superior value of the other.

That confirms my own writing above. Compassion is in recognizing strength, and in combating weakness thereby. Clearly, combating something means to recognize it.

What I introduced earlier, the phenomenon of love of anothers weaknesses, this is what drives the Democratic party, "BLM", and other racists and scum.

Fixed Cross wrote:

That confirms my own writing above. Compassion is in recognizing strength, and in combating weakness thereby. Clearly, combating something means to recognize it.

What I introduced earlier, the phenomenon of love of anothers weaknesses, this is what drives the Democratic party, "BLM", and other racists and scum.

I can't disagree with this, because I simply have no awareness of it. I do not understand this sort of "compassion" that would try to "love weakness", to me that means nothing at all. It is a non-entity. But I will take your word for it that this is how these people are... I generally prefer not to think about the mentality that such people might hold.

It just dawned on me a few days ago that this explains everything about their behavior. And I remember classically reading a story in school which was about a disabled guy who was being treated with this attitude, and making a remark in class, saying its painful to be loved for ones weaknesses, and the whole class including the teacher staring at me with open mouth. A girl muttered my name in disbelief and the teacher stammered and went on to her own interpretation, which was of course that it was incredibly romantic and happy and that the writer misunderstood his subject because he couldn't have been suffering of this 'care'.

I simply don't have the mental or emotional energy, time or space, to spend to consider such lowly beings. Fuck them, honestly. If anyone "loves weakness" then such a person doesn't even properly exist. I can't even see how such a thing is even possible, but considering that 50% of people are certifiably retarded and 99% of the rest are clueless by choice, I suppose you have a point.

Capable wrote:

Capitalism is simple to understand, ...

Yeah, I don't have a problem understanding it or even supporting it. It's just that, in my opinion, it is very top heavy. Always has been, really.

Capable wrote:

I'm well versed in Rand, she is ok in some ways but I do not consider her to be much of a philosopher. Her experiences with the USSR clearly showed her the merits of capitalism and she obviously loved America, but the problem with her and "the virtue of selfishness" is that you end up using other people openly and narcissistically for your own gain, you value others only based on their use-value to yourself, which circles around into an empty utilitarianism. She accurately describes a valid and important aspect of human being, such as personified in her character of Roark, but she inaccurately hypostasizes that aspect to the entirety of human being as if there were nothing else there except for "virtuous selfishness" and a disinterest in other people save for the utility value they are able to give us.

Yeah, that's what I picked up on when getting a peek preview of her "philosophy". We need more kindness on the planet.

Capable wrote:

I simply don't have the mental or emotional energy, time or space, to spend to consider such lowly beings. Fuck them, honestly. If anyone "loves weakness" then such a person doesn't even properly exist. I can't even see how such a thing is even possible, but considering that 50% of people are certifiably retarded and 99% of the rest are clueless by choice, I suppose you have a point.

My sentiments to the letter, my man.
I didn't choose to become conscious of this, this girl mentioned it and it fell into place.
Ive been saying people don't tend to exist. This explains how. What they "do" in order to perpetuate non-existence.

Sisyphus wrote:

Capable wrote:

I'm well versed in Rand, she is ok in some ways but I do not consider her to be much of a philosopher. Her experiences with the USSR clearly showed her the merits of capitalism and she obviously loved America, but the problem with her and "the virtue of selfishness" is that you end up using other people openly and narcissistically for your own gain, you value others only based on their use-value to yourself, which circles around into an empty utilitarianism. She accurately describes a valid and important aspect of human being, such as personified in her character of Roark, but she inaccurately hypostasizes that aspect to the entirety of human being as if there were nothing else there except for "virtuous selfishness" and a disinterest in other people save for the utility value they are able to give us.

Yeah, that's what I picked up on when getting a peek preview of her "philosophy".  We need more kindness on the planet.

I think she even trumps Nietzsche here and there. Ive not read her novels, first page was shit. Her essays aren't philosophy of depth but certainly of consistency.

This is why I say she is useful as a pillar.
I don't agree we need more kindness, the opposite. We need more honesty, and that is not something one can be kind about these days. Ive been having a lot of success in purifying myself being as hard as the truth is ugly.

Dion Fortune wrote:

5. The Pillar of Severity is considered to be negative or feminine, and the Pillar of Mercy to be positive or masculine.

Rand, Severity: VO, Mercy.

Fixed Cross wrote:

I don't agree we need more kindness, the opposite. We need more honesty, and that is not something one can be kind about these days. Ive been having a lot of success in purifying myself being as hard as the truth is ugly.

Damn! You trumped me. I'm normally the one who speaks of truth and honesty.

Kindness and honesty aren't mutually exclusive.

Back to compassion, I think there is true and false compassion. True compassion is what I feel when I feel it, it comes from valuing and loving another person and thus wanting to help them through tragic times, and wanting to see them rise above their more ignoble aspects. False compassion doesn't care about the other person at all, and merely emulates compassion outwardly in order to achieve some end. Political correct liberalism today is this latter kind of "compassion", these people don't really care and only fake it to achieve complex psychological and social ends, not the least of which is subtly co-opting the possibility of real compassion which would be able to see through the PC ruse.

I contend that there is such a thing as altruism. I have had some good discussions of this concept. And I do contend that religion has nothing to do with it.

Yes of course there is such a thing as altruism, and it is not all "evil" as Rand thinks. I understand her point and sometimes it is valid, but again, she overstates the case in the extreme. She makes the error of taking one aspect of something and acting like it were the only aspect of it. This is why her "philosophy" is actually a psychological system, an ideology and not a real philosophy. She is psychologically invested in maintaining a certain kind of position and world-view and this is more important to her than finding the truth.